How To Get Referrals When You're Not a Natural Networker

How can you demonstrate your trustworthiness by paying attention to these three principles as you build referral relationships in business?

1. Empathy at first glance seems the easiest. It means getting underneath the other person's skin. Really understanding what is important to them and how it feels for them. More than that it means respecting their perspective and emotions even when they are at odds with how you perceive and experience the world and it requires the other person to do the same for you. Somewhere in those perceptions and experience, there will be the common ground that binds the relationship.

2. Authenticity, on the other hand, being yourself within that relationship and allowing each of you to be different. As I've said before we as humans are finely tuned cheat detectors and we will pick up quite quickly when someone is inauthentic, putting on a front, or outright lying. In a relationship, we need to feel safe enough, to be honest about our values and beliefs. In fact, that intuitive feeling when we “know” we trust someone usually comes when we open up with some self-disclosure, some vulnerability that is accepted by the other person. To me, that is the reconciliation of these two principles.

3. Frei's last point about logic, I still struggle with as many people I know can be illogical on some issues without losing my trust. I think she means having some method of reasoning and evidence to back up your assertions and actions. The example she gives is about managers being over-promoted far above their level of competence (An Uber Peter Principle, maybe?)

Another way of putting this is is that to develop trust in a business relationship, both parties must demonstrate credibility in their knowledge and skills of their particular products or services.